1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an arrangement of discharge openings in a printhead of a multi-color ink printer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Printing terminals and output devices found in modern office communications or data processing systems are generally required to present both text and graphics. For text representation, a high output rate is frequently desired in circumstances where reduced print quality is acceptable. Such reduced print quality is referred to herein as draft quality (DQ). In addition, there should also be the possibility of presenting text of very good print quality. For such good print quality, a reduced output speed is often acceptable. Such good print quality is referred to herein as near-letter quality (NLQ). Multi-color representations are also increasingly demanded for graphic presentations.
So-called ink printers have proven suitable devices to meet these demands. The ink printer comprises an ink printhead for representing characters or graphics. As is generally known, an ink printhead has a plurality of discharge openings formed as nozzles from which discrete droplets are ejected under the influence of individually driveable piezo-electric drive elements. The discrete droplets form the desired characters or desired graphic patterns in a grid fashion on a recording medium, which is moved relative to the printhead. The known devices which address the above-mentioned demands suffer from a disadvantage in that only one of the requirements is fully met in each device and other requirements are only provided with a more or less pronounced sacrifice in quality.